Be Excellent To Each Other

I thought you could export contacts to universally friendly xml?

Phone get! *mops brow*

Not turned it on yet but form factor wise, the rubberised back echoes my outgoing Nokia N95 and the whole unit is easily the nicest smart/touch phone unit I've held. Cross fingers for when the battery charges. We'll see if Sense makes sense.

Posting from it now... if it could run Eve I'd be selling pc.

Confusing though - for RSS I use google reader for everything, so do I get theta through my browser or can I sync the news widget/app/whatever to the same account, or is there a seperate google reader app for android?

It's going to be a long and worthwhile afternoon.

Actually, it's going to be a long and miserable afternoon.

It asked me if I wanted to connect to facebook and I fed it my details, it then loaded my contacts (people, for some reason, even though some of my contacts aren't people, they're organisations) with all this crap, phone numbers and photos of people I'd never call in a million years but happened to be friends with on facebook. So I want rid, I want to add all my contacts manually and decide which info goes in and which does not.

There's no option to delete any of them. I read the manual, no hint is jumping out at me. I google it - apparently you can't do it from the app itself for some helpful reason, you've got to go in through a number of settings menus. I do that. It works. So, I start doing it the way I want to and always have, manually going through and copying over. I put in my wife's name and mobile number - where do you want to save? Well, I fancy saving them to sim. "You will not be able to save certain information" what then? Any clues? No, so I think bugger it, I'll save one and delete it if it's not full-featured enough. As I suspected I can only save name and number. No matter, I'll just delete that contact from my sim or move it to the phone or card.

Heh. Will I fuck. Android phones don't delete contacts from the sim. My Motorola housebrick from 1997 could delete the fucking sim contacts, why can't a £420 superphone from today do so?

Anyone got an app that'll do this?

Also, any other desperately fucking retarded design choices for idiotic cunts about Android that anyone's aware of, before I go all Rev. Stu?

*mutters something a bit too quiet to catch*

This is what you get for using a Facebook app
Anyway, assuming you've connected it to a Google account, just delete the contacts from that, then sync your phone.

A quick glace around the Internet suggests there are a few apps to save and delete from your Sim Card, but really, you want to be getting rid of everything on it and saving all your contact information on your phone, so it can be backed up to your Google account. It's not the 90s any more

But.... but the music was so much better then...

It offers to execute this shitness on the iPhone version too. I clicked "no thanks" to that one.

Can anyone recommend a decent SMS app for the G1. I've been using Handcent for ages, but it still seems to have the problem where it sends out random texts when you turn the phone on. I think it's just trying to resend undelivered texts, but it doesn't seem to have a very good grasp of whether or not a text has been delivered.

What's missing from the one it comes with + SMS Popup?

Is "the default app is a bit ugly" an acceptable response?
In fairness, SMS Popup seems to have come on a bit since I last used it, and I'd rather have an ugly app that works properly, than a pretty one that has some serious bugs.

My brother just got one of the new HTC Desire Android phones and it seems lovely. If I was wanting a smartphone then I reckon I'd probably have it over an iPhone.

Well, they are better unless you want specific apps or iTunes or whatever, which I understand a fuckload of people will.

Question, chaps - I've been merrily using free apps so far but am not unhappy to shell out for some paid ones - but many don't seem to have an equivalent demo in the free section - I've read apps automatically have a 1 day demo or something but as I imagine the cost of them just goes onto my bill I'm loath to click buy on one just in case, like. So, generic Shooter 3 is $2.99 in the marketplace - how do I demo it, then pay for it?

Isn't there a window for a refund? Three days or something.

I was just reading the TechRadar review of the HTC Desire - sounds amazing! I might have to have a serious play with an Android phone at some point as there's a lot about them that appeals to me... although my fairly substantial use of the TomTom app on my iPhone (which isn't exactly a cheap app) is making me feel very wary of moving away from Apple's wonderphone.

Not sure if this might be any use to Android users, but the Register has an article on ten essential Android apps

If an iPhone works for you I'd be tempted not to deviate but by all means get hold of a decent HTC android phone, minding that they use their own Sense UI which is utterly ninja on a Snapdragon. A Nexus One and a Desire side by side will give you the breadth of high-end Android love. Lower grade Android phones might be a handy comparison but they would be uninteresting in the same way your aunt's new £250 PC World laptop isn't, with the Hero being the Android average, I suppose.

Devilman - ta for the link.

I want this free app

http://www.androlib.com/android.applica ... -wtmx.aspx

but it doesn't show up on the Market for my phone (irritatingly lots of apps don't because of something Orange have done) and I can't get it from anywhere else.

can anyone here get and send me the APK, please?

Have they still not fixed that? Mother fuckers!

It's because Orange
a) took the vanilla version of the base Android OS for their handsets, rather than the Google branded version
b) refused to pay to join the Open Handset Alliance, the industry body that controls Android

So they can't use Google's certificate for Marketplace access and they can't issue their own under the OHSA. In turn, this means some enormous number of apps are hidden from you when you use the Marketplace.

This came to light almost a year ago, I'm astonished they haven't bothered to sort it out.

I need a second twitter app, as I'm about to be rocking two accounts. I am more than happy with Peep and its Friendstream integration but I want my non-personal contacts separated out, for great justice. Thus, I'd like the other client to be not ugly, not hogging processes by having loads of shit and possibly to have a decent widget option. All I need it for is to show tweets really. Anyone got a recommendation before I try them all out? I know some are mentioned earlier in this thread but android apps update weekly so all info is out of date.

No multi-account Twitter apps? Most of the iPhone ones just support more than one account now.

Looks like most Androids do as well, but without the widget I want :/

you tried Twidroid Pro?

I had it but it slowed my HTC Hero down to a fucking crawl!

Review - They like it, but seems quite balanced to my mind.

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones ... 515/review

Got my hands on a desire only today, coincidently. iPhone4 has got to do something rather special, because this is the best phone on the market right now.

I'd imagine being able to run iPhone apps on it will do the trick for Mr. Jobs again. I'm not missing what I never had but I'm sure many will want real Flight Control, not the three or four alternatives on Android Market.

Looks like the new HTC Incredible currently claims the Android crown:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/19/droi ... le-review/

Jan 2011 is my next phone upgrade, I can only imagine how awesome Android phones will be by then! As long as they have much better media/audio player functionality (closer to the iPhone) by then, I'll be well happy, it's getting close to the time to retire my knackered old iRiver H140.

anyone got any decent links for app reviews/recommendations?

I use these two;


androlib.com - pretty handy (and each app page has a scannable barcode square thing). Site's a mess though and populated by mongs.

appbrain.com - bit tidier, still not really gotten deeply into it. has a handy app that syncs via Google and makes your phone download the apps you select on the site. if they are available on Market (which is less common with my phone being Orange and all that).

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/21/goog ... -androids/

ta very much Google

Grim... and I were discussing this this morning. We cannot see any way that TomTom aren't fucked.

I know that when this was released in the US a little while ago all of the satnav companies kicked off about it - they'll be shitting themselves! Does iPhone's Google Maps do this yet too? If not, they won't be far behind.

I would much rather have a dedicated device than use my phone. I don't know why, precisely.

Because you've not seen a phone do it yet?

No, the iPhone's Google Maps app isn't anywhere near this good yet. It has plenty of credible satnav packages in the App Store, most of which undercut TomTom's app.

Don't forget Google Maps still requires constant data connection, and (I know from experience) it sucks hard if you're out in the sticks on GPRS data only -- which is one of the times you most need it. There's a lot to be said for paying to have a map database on the phone.

How can plonking your phone in a cradle on your dashboard so it turns into a satnav be anything but perfectly convenient? Don't plenty of people do this already if they want to do hands free when driving?

Plenty of SD storage available now with 32GB cards. Optional cache coming soon, maybe?

I'd imagine so. Possibly a pre-downloadable cache too. With street view. Yummy!

How big do you think that would be?!

BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG

The free (but not as good) Nokia Ovi Maps does satnav and lets you cache route to your microSD card, wouldn't surprise me at all if google are working on that.

I really don't know. But then I don't do any of the above, because I have an integrated satnav and a bluetooth kit for answering the phone. I just don't like horrible stick-on cradles and trailing power leads.

This is especially intriguing for me as the TomTom app is probably the main thing tying me to the iPhone at the moment.

For the record, it's a bloody good app, especially since recent updates added text-to-speech and traffic.

Right until someone calls you.

Until June.

I'm 99% sure the option to interrupt low-level things like "I'm getting a phone call" will never be introduced to iPhone.

Oh right. No, it won't, but TomTom will continue running in the background, which is a much smaller inconvenience than the current situation.

But if this new multitasking thing means that it will go straight back to the app without reloading once I've hit 'Decline' on the phone call, I'll be happy. As it stands, I will confess that it can be a bit of a pain in the arse when that happens.

I'd imagine so, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. You might need to select the app from the "background slidey selector thing" still.

I'll mention, as we're in the Android thread, that Android Apps can happily take over the 'incoming call' stuff. And make them. And send text messages. And emails. And your bank account details.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/steve-jobs-porn

You heard the man, lads...